


Welcome (Things You Said When We Were the Happiest We Ever Were)

by ExpatGirl



Series: They're Not Small, They're Bijoux: One-Shots and Mini-Fic [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Cake, Developing Friendships, Gen, Post-Season/Series 10, Season/Series 11, Talking, black holes, weirdly cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9826181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: Charlie's got a new job, and Hannah's not sure what to think about it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/gifts).



> I wrote this with Hannah's second-to-last vessel, Caroline, in mind, but of course you can picture her in her last vessel. Both were really gorgeous, weren't they?

Heaven’s so empty. Hannah’s not sure what’s happened--did the gate stop working? No, there’d be others stuck up here with her; another expulsion? No, then she wouldn’t be here at all--but _something_ isn’t right. And yet. The sound of Heaven is familiar, pleasing, passes through her like the wind through the wheatfields she remembers on her long drives with Castiel.

 _Castiel_. His name flickers from soft gold-white to red, then blue, a spark snagging on silk, before it ripples away again. For some reason, she prays for him and isn’t sure where the impulse comes from.

****

Hannah moves through Heaven the way all angels do--breath and stasis, the vessel and the wave--when suddenly she’s _embodied._ Fully. How odd. She blinks, and looks around. And there...is someone.

“Hi!” the someone says. Red hair and a smiling face. Female?

“H-ello.”

“You seem surprised.”

“You’re...not an angel.”

“And you are!”

“What...why aren’t you with the other humans? And where are my brothers and sisters?”

“I asked for this gig. Well, actually, I created this gig because it didn’t seem to be getting done. You know, because things are just _weird_ down there, and you know what they say right? As above, so below? Or I guess, in this case, as below, so...Sorry.” She clears her throat and holds out her hand. “Hi, Charlie Bradbury, nice to meet you.”

“Hannah,” Hannah says. She is, perhaps, supposed to grasp hands now, but there are too many potential arrangements of fingers and...Oh, the human has lowered its hand. _Her_ hand? Her hand.

“Okay, so, it probably seems super empty up here to you right now. I don’t know how long you’ve been here but uh, y’know, I think...you should know that you...probably died.” She looks up at what’s now a ceiling. “Okay, no, you _definitely_ died, but…’ 

“ _What_?” Hannah feels her wings flare out in a desperate banking maneuver. Wait. She hasn’t been able to use them in years. They’re nothing but jagged bolts of pain she drags behind her every moment, and yet now she feels them shimmer and crackle with power. “That’s impossible. When an angel dies it ceases to be, it becomes Empty.”

“Uppercase E,” Charlie muses. “That never stops being creepy.” Hannah rings, beaten like a bell, and suddenly Charlie is gripping her by the shoulders. “Woah, hey. I know, it’s...a lot to take in. I get that, you know, this isn’t what you were told would happen but, uh...I gotta tell you that most of what you were told was bullshit. Sorry for the language.”

“English?”

“No, not...never mind. The point is...take as long as you need to to get used to the idea.”

“It’s... _no_. It’s _impossible._ ”

“And yet, here we are!” Charlie pulls out a chair that she seems to have called forth. “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“What?”

“It’s...okay, uh...let’s try something else.” She takes a deep breath. “Tell me the first happy memory that comes into your head.”

“I don’t understand.”

This makes Charlie frown, which Hannah finds she doesn’t like. “Right. I’ll go first. One time I bought a chocolate cake and ate the whole thing myself and I didn’t even get sick.”

“Um.”

“Carrie Fisher once complimented my earrings at a con, and I cried for two days straight.”

“That doesn’t sound very happy.”

“Dude, it was _amazing_.” Her eyes sparkle at something Hannah can’t see, even when she turns around to look. “Okay, your turn.” 

Hannah sits there, staring.

“It can be anything, from any time! The first happy thing that pops into your head.”

“Uh...I bought Castiel a coffee at a gas station in Idaho, and he drank it and said I’d made it just the way he likes it.” She thinks about it, the way the tiredness on his face lifted momentarily, and he’d smiled at her, and the red-blue spark returns, less sharply this time.

Charlie’s eyes widen, and she grabs Hannah’s hands. “Castiel!”

“You know him?”

“Wow, where do I even start?” She shakes her head. “Well, I guess I’ll start with a happy memory. I had an injury, and he healed it.” She flexes her fingers. “Good as new. For a little while, anyway.” Her mouth twists. “Never mind...tell me another one! You guys were in Idaho?”

“Yes, we were…” Suddenly it doesn’t matter why. What matters is watching the stars swirl by as Castiel’s presence ebbs and flows against hers from the driver’s seat. For some reason the pain and degradation of the memory are distant here, and all she can call up is the soft undercurrent of protection and _home_. She tells Charlie about that, instead. She tells her about how nice showers are. How pleasant it is to see angels smile with human faces. How pleasant it became to see humans smile.

Charlie tells her about books, and girls with soft hair and athletic thighs; about something called sanitized input data; about more cake; about her mother, and her brothers.

Hannah goes further back. Watching the births and deaths of stars; healing her siblings; sliding along the edges of black holes for the sheer joy of singing to something that could match you in pitch and volume (“The most fun, though, is when they repeat your song back to you. They don’t do that for everyone, you know.” Charlie goes very wide-eyed at that.)

It’s impossible to say how long passes, but gradually the ringing dies away.

“You’re very kind,” she says, glancing around at what has become a book-lined room. There is a poster of a star cluster on the wall, bearing the letters N-A-S-A. “But I’m still not sure I believe you.”

  
Charlie tucks her hair behind her ear. “I know, but you will when you’re ready. Now,” she says, grinning. “Do you want to hear a story?”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt.


End file.
